Project managers are responsible for successfully completing projects and achieving project objectives notwithstanding many risks which may threaten to disrupt project execution. A risk may be anything which is not currently confirmed but has the potential to negatively affect a project schedule, cost, functional scope, and/or quality. Evaluating and coping with risks is difficult, particularly when project managers quantify risks differently and associate different levels of concern with the same quantified risk. Often risks are not addressed until the steps to mitigate the risks require greater resource allocation. Insufficiently mitigated risks can develop into problems that negatively impact other projects. Furthermore, risks change over time, such that a project manager may continue to invest significant resources mitigating a risk even after the risk has diminished in criticality. The project manager's director may be unaware of the changing risks for the project and the project manager's inefficient use of resources.
Traditionally, project approval and management within a company or organization is focused primarily on resource availability and timing. However, this project approval process fails to consider the level and degree of disruption on the organization as a result of the cumulative and inter-related number of changes project implementation causes and the ability of employees to adopt and adapt to these changes as they occur.